


No need for vistas we are one / in the complicated foreground of space

by Birdbitch



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, Cold War, Cryofreeze (Marvel), M/M, Memory Loss, Not Canon Compliant, One Shot, SHIELD, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:21:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24872206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birdbitch/pseuds/Birdbitch
Summary: Captain America invites his neighbor over for a party.SHIELD agent Bucky Barnes doesn't remember much, but he's sure he remembers this.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41





	No need for vistas we are one / in the complicated foreground of space

**Author's Note:**

> It's hard to focus on any long term project right now, right?  
> -It's the 60s  
> -Bucky's past is complicated  
> -Steve is still Captain America   
> -Title comes from "To You" by Frank O'Hara

a.

Bucky and Natasha speaking Russian to each other makes the other SHIELD operatives nervous, but not so nervous that they reveal it. This is something only Bucky and Nat catch on with each other, shared mostly through head tilts and raised eyebrows rather than the Russian. Neither of them were KGB, just something much worse; yet, SHIELD needs them and needs what they can do, and they should both feel fortunate about having this option rather than some jail cell for crimes they may or may not have committed.

(Bucky’s memory is still mostly slush; between the glimpses back to boyhood and the second world war, training exercises with some intelligence agencies before he must have even been sixteen, he has the feeling that he’s been put into the position of acting for others more often than not. Natasha either can’t or won’t verify for him.)

With these kinds of missions, it’s very cut and dry--very  _ Man from UNCLE _ , Bucky thinks. Stop nuclear war. Reroute messages so they reach different people, or don’t reach who they’re meant to. Shoot some people. Avoid getting shot. With SHIELD, at least, it’s easier to pretend there aren’t political motivations behind what they’re doing. He knows that it would be different, if they were funneled into the CIA, or something else. So Bucky and Natasha talk Russian together on the plane ride home, talking, mostly, about food, and about the Falcon and, even, sometimes, about Captain America.

b.

They found and unthawed Captain America in ‘63, almost about three years ago to the day. Since then, he’s been a member of the Avengers, which is a concept that makes Bucky laugh, but he still waves to Steve across the half-courtyard that separates his side of the apartments that SHIELD pays for from Steve’s side. 

Bucky likes his neighbor. 

He's got sunglasses on getting back to his door at 8 in the morning after a long night at work (the espionage bit is getting old, but he can't seem to stop, not after the teen Soviet spy "gig" for HYDRA and  _ do svidaniya _ to all that), and his gorgeous neighbor Captain America is leaving across the half-courtyard, taking out his trash. They wave, Bucky goes and crashes on his couch, and snores. 

They technically work together. It would have made him snort, back when he was still an asset, kidnapped and tested on and brainwashed, but now, they're neighbors and they work together and if anyone says any code they hadn't been able to deprogram out of him, Captain America is there to contain him if the sleeper is activated. They both know that "contain" is codeword for "kill," but Steve Rogers is a nice enough man that Bucky doesn't hold it against him. It's the real reason, Bucky is sure, that they live so close to each other, but, again, Bucky likes his neighbor. Steve sometimes takes out his trash for him. It feels familiar, like they might have known each other in another life. 

So when Natasha does tease him about Captain America, it is for a good reason, though she wishes she wouldn’t do it in front of the other agents who don’t know any better, and who tend to think that two former Soviet assets talking Russian and dropping in Steve’s name must be some kind of signal. 

c.

That evening, he's playing solitaire and listening to the radio when there's a knock at his door. "It's open," he hollers, and Steve sticks his head in. 

"Nat and Sam are over, if you're interested," he says. He reminds Bucky a lot of the American beer ads and Coca-Cola ads, except possibly more wholesome and earnest, and it makes Bucky consider his cards and his vodka Collins carefully.

"Yeah, okay," he decides, and he follows Steve back to his place, and for a moment, none of them look like spies or superheroes, just fashionable young people. 

There's more than just Natasha and Sam here, some other super-types, and if Steve weren't Steve there'd be a noise complaint, but Bucky has been roped into it already and can't just leave. He knows some of them. "Play rummy with us," Natasha says, pulling him into the kitchen, which is just wide enough to fit a card table and a few chairs. Steve's bedroom is through the door on his left (his own apartment is mirrored). "You too, Steve." 

When Sam comes out of the bathroom, Natasha deals the cards, and Steve scooches his seat closer to Bucky's. "There are more people here than you said there'd be," Bucky murmurs under his breath. A three card run in his hand, 7-8-9 hearts. Sam flips the top card--10, but spades. Bucky can feel Steve shift a little next to him, seams of their pants just touching--it’s just that there’s not much space in the kitchen. No--Bucky pushes the front of his hair out of his face and sighs. 

"Sam and Nat  _ are  _ here, though," Steve answers,  _ sotto voce _ , looking at his cards and leaning closer, words directly to Bucky. 

"Something you two want to share with the class?" Sam asks, raising an eyebrow at the both of them. He doesn't put down any runs and discards what he picked up. 

"Steve's bad at head counts," Bucky answers. He watches Natasha take the cigarette out from between Sam's fingers to take a drag, and he's jealous. 

"No, just rosters," Steve says. He picks up the discards and plays 10-Jack-Queen. It's unorthodox, but acceptable. "We had a successful day, so I thought I would host for once," he says to Bucky. Then, to Sam, "it was successful, right?"

"Nobody died," Sam considers. "City's safe. Good day."

"Buck, it's your turn."

"I'm just saying," he says, putting down the run, picking up, discarding, "that it's a little cozier than I thought it'd be." Going through the motions.

"Cozy isn't a bad thing," Natasha says. "You should remember, James, how much more information you can get from a crowded party than a quiet one." 

"Sorry," Steve says, and Bucky shrugs. He's not mad. Natasha, per usual, is right: it’s much easier to get information when nobody else is paying attention. So they play cards.

d.

Midnight rolls in like it's nothing, and it's just the four of them, sitting in the living room talking about nothing, which is what the most pleasant conversations Bucky has had since coming (back) to America have been about. Steve leans a little closer and lights a cigarette for him, and he knows that somewhere, his mother would be concerned for him, if she were still alive. The "after work" gathering ended about an hour ago. “Mission tomorrow?” Steve asks, leaning back, watching, curious, and Bucky shakes his head.

“Last one was ah, heavy--they think I need a couple days off,” he says.

“Worried about reprogramming,” Natasha explains, stretching her legs out in front of her. 

“Mm, yeah. I’m a case of extreme brainwashing and cryo fog,” Bucky says, and he grins at Steve, who doesn’t quite grin back. “It’s alright, I’m over it now.” 

Steve’s eyes linger for a moment before he turns away. “Well, at least you have a day off,” he says.

e.

Natasha and Sam wave as they leave, and then it’s just Steve and Bucky, “I live next door, I can help clean up,” he tells her, hanging by the door. She holds his face between both of her hands, kisses him on the forehead with her bright red lips, and then presses her own against the mark, not terribly unlike, Bucky thinks, a mother.

“Be safe,” she murmurs. 

“We can trust him,” he answers, because it’s so hard, when it’s not the two of them together against everything else. 

“Mm, yes. He’s a good man.” 

“Lucky us, huh?”

“Be safe,” she repeats again.

f.

Bucky likes his neighbor. Steve doesn't need help cleaning up, not really, and Bucky knew it, waits at the windowsill smoking and watching Steve pour him another drink. (The two of them have iron-clad livers. Maybe it's for the same reason--lab rats.) "I was really half joking about the cryo fog," he says, taking the gin and sighing. "But she's probably right; I can't assume that our jobs make the recovery process any easier."

It's really, he's sure, a blessing in disguise. 

"They don't, but I'd say our unfreezing experiences are a little different." Steve moves like he's still unsure of his body, sometimes. It's different when he has the shield, like it balances him or gives him a focus for where to put his weight, but Steve's shoulders, unguarded like this, have the tendency to curl in slightly, protective of himself. "I appreciate you staying. Helping."

"What can I say?" 

He can say: sleeping alone is both preferred in many ways but sleeping with someone else who is just as neurotic as you are because of shared traumatic experiences doesn't hurt too bad. He can say, Steve doesn't really have to try in order for Bucky to like him, or for Bucky to set his drink on the boomerang table someone else picked out for Steve's "Winter Soldier Stakeout" apartment, because Steve, since the first time they even were paired on a mission, has understood him in ways that only Natasha has come close to. So he approaches where Steve has sat down on the sofa, and he swings his legs so that they're framing Steve's own, and he waits for Steve to tilt his face up so he can plant a good one on him.

It doesn't take much prompting to encourage Steve to wrap his arms around Bucky's back, or for him to shift them so that Bucky's back is on the sofa cushions and he's looking up at Captain America's face, and for a moment it feels familiar, beyond just what they do, often now, but the moment is gone, and Bucky sweeps what's starting to count as bangs off Steve's forehead and feels, briefly, bereft of  _ some _ thing he can't quite grasp, and possibly never will. "I forgot her once. Natasha. I get worried that I might forget—" but he can't bring himself to say it, and instead sighs. "These picture windows are awful from a tactical standpoint."

"I can take you to the bedroom."

"How do they call it? 'Cross the threshold'? I won't stop you." 

So, Captain America does.

g.

Captain America, as it turns out, is a little bit of a pervert but, as it turns out, Bucky is, too. The first time they did this, they  _ had _ actually worked on a mission together; not their first one, but something near there, and it had been--close, too close. 

He keeps feeling surprised every time Steve’s still interested, but he likes this, whatever it is, even if sometimes it feels like Steve's brain is somewhere else some of the time. He's able to focus, at least on the drag of Steve's hand pulling his shirt up, of the insistent pressure of his mouth. On the surprise of higher thread-count sheets than the last time Bucky had been in here, and on the fact that Steve has kept the lights on and the blinds closed. 

There’s something in him that’s pretty sure that he and Steve must have had a thing before, during the war, before Bucky was brainwashed, but those years are still pitched out for him, and even when he does have a glimmer of what might have been the truth of what he used to be, even before this, he’s never sure if it’s an actual memory or if it’s a dream. For his part, Steve barely remembers the war either, but it’s hard saying if for him it’s a side-effect from when the plane went down, or if it’s being blocked out. Either way, the way Steve gets Bucky under him (subduing hold, Bucky thinks, relaxing into it) feels good enough that any lingering tension from the mission the night before floods out of him.

Steve presses a kiss against a bruise on Bucky’s shoulder, sighs soft words against the side of Bucky’s face, words that Bucky holds and keeps and hopes, hopes, hopes that nobody will ever get to use against either of them when he repeats them back. They’re private; they’re some of the only things that are his. 

“I was thinking about you last night,” Steve says, then, undoing Bucky’s belt and working his pants off.

“Yeah?” Bucky asks. “What kind of thinking?” like he doesn’t know. Steve's too tender for their kind of work. Bucky lifts his hips, licks his lips. "Careful you don't blow a fuse there, Cap."

Steve groans. "Christ," he says, and the kiss has Bucky smiling even as Steve folds him up in half so he can go right into eating Bucky out. "Christ," he says again, "look at you."

Look at you. Look at me? Look at  _ you _ , Bucky thinks. 

h.

"When do you think they're going to have you neutralize me?" Bucky asks, later still. 

"Not going to happen," Steve answers. 

"You've gotta wonder."

"I'm Captain America. I don't gotta do anything."

It makes Bucky laugh, at least. “I’m glad you don’t think about it,” he says.

Steve shakes his head, pulls Bucky flush against him, sighs deeply. Maybe he’s wishing he had his pipe ready to smoke, just to have something to do, but as it stands, he doesn’t, so it’s just the two of them breathing the same air, which is hot but not too humid, all things considered. “You’re not the only one with memory loss,” Steve reminds him, gentle. “As far as SHIELD knows, I might be a deep sleeper agent myself, and they might have only dragged me up out of the ice because it was a set up. You ever think that you might actually have to neutralize  _ me _ one day?”

“It’s never crossed my mind,” Bucky answers.

“I don’t suppose it would cross most people’s minds, but it’s something I think about.” He snorts. “There’s not a lot I remember, but I know--I know I remember you. I just don’t know if it’s from just after the freeze or if it’s from before.” 

What a mess the two of us are, Bucky thinks, but he presses closer to Steve, as though that’s possible. “We look pretty good for our age, though,” he says, diffusing, and Steve laughs out something that sounds almost like it could be a sob. “We really do. Think of all the guys younger than us who look worse. I think we got the better deal.”

“You think?”

Bucky bites his bottom lip. He’s tired again, and he’s starting to get a little bit of a headache--one of the ones that, thankfully, some sleep manages to be effective against. “Yeah,” he says, pressing a kiss against Steve’s jaw. “Absolutely.”


End file.
